One Day
by whipplefilter
Summary: Sheriff is the one car Doc trusts to mend him. "You realize I only know street medicine, right?" Sheriff reminds him. "Patching, taping, ratcheting-" [Doc and Sheriff friendship fic.]


"It ages you, that's for sure," Doc says, of mentoring Lightning. He coughs–a slightly sticky sound.

"What's he up to now, anyway?" asks Sheriff, as he brews the engine flush into Doc's morning oil.

Doc take the pail and shrugs. "Don't care. Not waiting."

A cursory assessment of the town reveals that Lightning's hobbling around outside the Cone while Sally does yard maintenance. He seems exceptionally interested in lawn-trimming today. Sheriff can see Sally's dramatic, full-bodied eye-roll from here. She says, "It's not exactly an art form, Stickers. I just do it."

She moves on to the next patch, and Lightning follows. He sounds like a mess–rattling metal on metal, his body grinding in the way parts shouldn't. From what Sheriff had gathered from Doc before breakfast, that sound is the aftermath of exactly what Doc had warned him would happen if he tried that. Whatever "that" was, Lightning had apparently tried it.

"He hurting?" asks Sheriff.

"Should be. Got a shorn nut, enough suspension damage to fund the revitalization of half of downtown. Says no, though."

Across town, Sheriff watches Lightning turn down Mater's offer of morning shenanigans, which suggests otherwise. He's limping bad enough as he tries to follow Mater's wild figure eights through the Cones that even Mater relents.

Doc drains the last of his oil and idles, letting the concoction flush through him and clear some of the congestion out of his engine. He coughs again.

"Think that'll do it for you?"

Doc coughs. Says they'll try it again tomorrow, which is exactly what he'd said the day before. But if not, they might have to get in mechanically, clear the sludge.

"You realize I only know street medicine, right?" Sheriff reminds him. "Patching, taping, ratcheting–"

"I'll walk you through it." The way he says it, flat and simple, leaves no room for banter, or skirting the issue. It's the tone of voice Doc uses when there ain't sense in arguing with him: Whatever he says you're gonna do, you're gonna do. And tomorrow, there's a good chance Sheriff will be taking apart his friend's engine, putting it all back together again. Because of course that doesn't sound like the kind of thing you'd need any sort of medical training for.

"You know Ramone won't touch anything deeper than bodywork without getting skittish," Doc says, in response to Sheriff's look of reservation. "And Sarge's solution to everything is amputation." That the rest of the town was inadequate to the task went without saying, it seemed. And Lightning, Doc says–Lightning, he wouldn't trust with even wiper fluid.

"He's convinced I'm _contagious_ ," Doc scoffs. "Won't let me touch him 'til I'm all healed up. I don't even know where he learned the word–you ever heard of contagious car trouble? I keep telling him rust isn't contagious, much less engine sludge, but he's the stubbornest–"

Doc stops his idling. His voice still sounds garbled, but it's clearer now. They'll just have to see how the day goes, whether the congestion sludges back.

Sheriff hopes not.

"You know," he says, "most of the time I forget about the rest of the world. I beat my bounds, maintain the impound, control traffic"–and here, Doc looks at him quizzically; he doesn't seem to think Radiator Springs needs much in the way of traffic control, even now–"and life here feels–complete, you know?"

Doc knows. Or he knew–and then he met Lightning, and remembered some unfinished business. But even then, life in Radiator Springs is second to none.

"I guess I don't really feel that far off from the rest of the world," Sheriff attempts to explain. "Right up until the doctor might need doctoring. That kind of paradox just makes you think differently about distance, you know?" Distance to hospital, distance to help.

"Until the doctor needs doctoring," Doc parrots. He chuckles. Says it's not much of a paradox, or an irony. Just a reality. "If it comes to that tomorrow, I'll walk you through it," he assures Sheriff. "Then you can play doctor whenever you want."

Sheriff sighs. He tries not to think of dark and arcane futures, apocalypse scenarios where anyone but Doc is playing doctor. Today the sky is bright and the breeze is not too warm and it smells like Sally's fresh-cut grass.

"How 'bout we practice," Doc says. "Oil change?"

Sheriff smiles at his friend. "Now that–that I can do," he says. "Did you know in Japan they have toilets that'll do it all for you? 100% automated oil change. I guess I'm not sure if I want a robot up in my undercarriage, though. Seems like you'd only want eyes in there you actually trust!"

Doc asks Sheriff what he's been reading now; he doesn't believe him about the robots. That's a mechanic's work, not a machine's.

"Well, then I guess we'll have to visit one day," huffs Sheriff, somewhat defensively, "and see for ourselves."

"One day," agrees Doc. He clears his throat, phlegmy but otherwise unbothered. And they head to the clinic, under the sun and in the breeze and toward the sort of day that's neither big, nor important, but that Sheriff knows that one day will be fondly remembered. It's the sort of day Radiator Springs does best.

Before they quite make it to the clinic, Mater's rushing down Main Street, back from his solo adventures. There's a portentous rumbling behind him. "Hey uh, not for nothing, but have you seen Red?" he asks.

Then he asks, "And would _you_ say… tractors is waterproof?"


End file.
